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In the studio, Elfman produces, and makes it come out the way he want it. In the concert hall, it’s supposed to be prepared before the performance.
I don’t understand, won’t Elfman overlook the orchestra preparations with an orchestrator before the performance, like he does with a film score?
You want to talk about Darkman, Ryan? Fine!
I think 1990 is perhaps, arguably, Elfman’s finest year, with — dare I say masterpieces? — like Edward Scissorhands, Dick Tracy and Nightbreed.
If you forgive the stupid analogy, Darkman is like a mixed drink, musically speaking — a splash of Bernard Herrmann, another splash of Korngold and Bartók, a tablespoon of Prokofiev (most notably, the Alexander Nevsky fare), and fill the rest of the glass with Danny Elfman, and you get Darkman.
Danny Elfman (as most composers do), has been very vocal about how he dialed, and channeled-upon, his musical predecessors, who in their day, elaborating upon the same musical grammar from composers who came before them:
“I’m always tapping into my 12-year-old mind-set when I’m scoring. You know, everybody does. That’s the whole thing,” Danny Elfman said for a Film Score Monthly interview in ‘97. “Every time I hear a score, if you look deep enough, you may not find a deconstruction of an earlier film, but you’ll find a deconstruction of Mahler, or you’ll find a deconstruction of Korngold, or you’ll find a deconstruction of — it varies — Bartók.”
Carnival from Hell, is a really fun track that transforms tremendously throughout the cue. First, it starts with a nutty curcus-piece, and it merges, musically, with dark, heavy woodwinds and brass. This is completely indicative of opera, with the art of sonic transformation, and other evocative “tools” from opera. This may be why the early Elfman scores, Darkman, Batman, respectively, is sometimes compared to Wagner, due to the abovementioned opera influences.
In a horribly wayward, paragraph-long, review on the Film Tracks website, Darkman got slapped with dubiousness: “The theme promises more than it delivers, and ultimately the score is not very memorable.” Personally, I don’t know what that means.
The Darkman theme is laid all throughout the score, with intelligent orchestration/construction in the Korngold, leitmotif, fashion. The High Steel cue takes the Darkman theme and gives it a Swashbuckler slant, akin to how Korngold would score a scene when Errol Flynn swings across the frame in The Adventures of Robin Hood or The Sea Hawk.
What’s more memorable than Korngold?
In Creating Durante, Elfman’s Korngold and Herrmann influence, for me, is clearly evident throughout the cue. Wherein, the Main Theme is reconstructed and put into all kinds of motivic, and leitmotivic, variations. It’s one of my favorite cues in the album that really epitomizes Elfman’s early, full-blown, Macabre sensibilities — with the Herrmann-brand instrumentation of bass clarinets, twin harps and organs.
(If you listen carefully in Batman, you can hear an early version of the Darkman theme when Vicki Vale’s shoe falls onto the wooden Cathedral stair and Batman looks up; or ties to, anyway — the suit was tight.)
Danny’s macabre sensibilities are probably the most apparent in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Especially during the Doctor Finkelstein/In The Forest and Christmas Eve Montage cues (with the bouncy tubas and playful woodwinds). It’s the hallmark of the vintage film scoring, circa, 30s and 40s, that Danny hearkened back to — the old-timely sound… the kind that was used back when the Warner cartoons had a lot of singing in them.
The Darkman score, starting with the Main Titles, have what I call, the “Sam Raimi sound”. The sound lives, particularly, in the brass. The horns are jaunty, shrill and violent. You can hear them in the Army of Darkness theme, and again, in the Spider-Man movies, more specifically, when Spidey confronts the highjacked convertible in the second film.
The Woe, Darkman…Woe cue is pure Burton-esque melancholy, and again, operatic. Prime vintage Elfman — complete with an organ motif that’s reminiscent of Beetlejuice. It also has a great feeling of isolation, full with harps and xylophones. Moreover, with the building of strings, there’s a little bit of Vertigo in Darkman’s secondary theme presented in the cue.
Rebuilding/Failure has much of that, Alexander Nevsky tone, with an alteration of the Darkman motif. It then merges into jumpy brass and then a viola solo — a Herrmann attribute, which can be heard in On Dangerous Ground, although, of course, the technique is not exclusive to Benny.
Maybe the weak link of the score, at least to my ears — the Love Theme — is just a warm and tender extension of the Darkman theme, but lovely, nevertheless. There are touches of Edward and Batman gooeyness, to boot.
The Fairy tale, nursery rhyme-feel that occupies the Julie Transforms cue, will later be the prototype for Little Demons, and the like. The great Elfman-fantasy archetype.
Rage boasts a very unsettling female choir, with taunting, almost nasally chant performance. With the type of “nah-nah-nah-nah…” you would hear in a schoolyard. This also might be what Darkman is hearing in his tortured head.
This also parallels (perchance), Herrmann’s Sisters score, with the film’s “stabbing” music.
Double Durante is common Elfman staple, with a rolling cadenza for piano (Mars Attacks!) and raw brass. I believe that you can also hear similar brass figures in Batman Returns, Black Beauty, and even Insanity, the Oingo Boingo gem.
Fun instrumentation, here, particularly the Tambourine. The cue very much characterizes Elfman’s patented (not really) dark, fanciful color — the Batman Returns/Nightmare template.
Plot Unfolds (Dancing Freak) is a doozy — nightmarish, Army of Darkness brass, followed by a Danny Elfman fantasia-of-color. It’s proceeded by frantic strings and wild carnival-like music. Soon after, the love theme reprise creeps in, and then… we get a waltz!
In the first several seconds of Julie Discovers Darkman, there’s a harp passage that sounds suspiciously like the Hulk six-note motif. Later, there’s a very precious, delicate, verison of the Darkman theme.
There’s more Darkman Theme in the Finale/End Credits, this time with a French horn solo, and ending, with a condensed version of the Main Titles.
Fin.
And damned if Clint Eastwood is gonna go and win a Golden Globe for best score.
Agreed.
…and Shore’s Aviator probably best deserved the award.
Out of the nominations they gave, perhaps, but do you think — on a similar note — that Danny Elfman got an Oscar nomination in ’97 because the academy loved the music to Goodwill Hunting, or because Danny Elfman scored music for that particular film? It’s so political, those award shows. I blame the Stonecutters. (He-he)
Really. Do audiences and listeners actually believe that The Aviator is the best score of the year?
Spider-Man 2 destroys The Aviator, by comparison.
Spider-Man 2 has smartly-constructed thematic material and variations. It has great muscular power, and sweet tenderness. Spider-Man is so lively, so agile, so inflecting.
Yes, The Aviator score was indeed lovely during the flight sequences, and had completely apt, and intelligent, Herrmann-esque spotting, but — and not to take away anything from Mr. Shore — it was so average.
There were/are so many other richly-deserved film scores to award, like:
Bad Education
Les Choristes
Spider-Man 2
Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban…if you do a google search for “danny elfman interviews” you’ll realize he attacks those composers…
What composers? Who?
Does anyone else think that Shore got the Golden Globe simply because the movie that he scored music for was The Aviator?
…probably the only friend elfman has since every other composer seems to hate him…
Blah, rubbish. No proof.
Wow, that’s pretty interesting. That you put all those together is really good investigative work.
Well, thanks, but the whole thing came to me the other day while brushing my teeth.
Yes, absolutely…!
Realistically, Ryan, what are the chances of seeing the concert piece on CD in the near future?
Dunno if it’s online, but my above comment is from the Evening with Kevin Smith DVD…
I remember Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, way back when.
The Superman Lives story is hysterical from the DVD. Though I’m glad Smith’s Superman script never materialized into a movie — despite his fine comic book writing, his second draft for Superman Lives wasn’t all that great. The script can be found on the Net, and it actually includes Superman’s eulogy by Batman which, in the script, was broadcast across the world.
The whole notion, though heartfelt, is completely dopey because Batman is supposed to be an urban legend, or at the very least, very discreet.
Ooo, look at that! Batman Returns — just more than two dollars at Amazon:
“Excellent condition, original packaging, will ship immediately.” Hurry!FYI: Songs have lyrics in them. Anything else is generally referred to as cues or tracks.
* Budweiser [commercial]: “This Bud’s For You” (song) (1984)
* Nissan [commercial] score (1996/97)
* Honda [commercial] score (Got me. Didn’t it come out recently?)
* Ford/Lincoln/Mercury [commercial] score (1998/99)
* K.R.O.Q [radio] radio jingle (1978)It was dropped.
My guess is that they didn’t have enough time to finish all the animation for the opening and closing segments.
If it is Howard’s music, than it’s a prime reason why Danny Elfman should be forced to score every major comic book movie.
No exceptions!
Well, regardless of the codpiece, the MPAA might force digital pants on Optimus Prime and company. I don’t care either way, as long as there’s plenty of synthesizer and Buttrock occupying the soundtrack.
Blah. I sure as hell hope he doesn’t. I’m tired of the Spiderman-esque stuff he’s been doing lately. I want to hear something different.
I want Danny’s music these days to sound more like Batman, unless, it actually does sound like Batman, in that case, I want it to sound like Spider-Man.
Sigh. My dream was to see an R-Rated live action TRANSFORMERS movie directed by Paul Verhoeven…
I don’t know about Paul Verhoeven, but the Transformers movie is guaranteed an R rating, what with all those potential nude robots running around.
I feel that I should score the new Transformers movie… through a series of humming and whistling.
I also want to mimic the sound of the robots transforming: Chee-cuu-cuu-cuu-ceeat!
Robots in Disguise!
The music sounds very much like Big Fish, and it didn’t seem Spidey enough for the scene.
And “Raindrops” does sound like Spider-Man music?
The “Happy Montage” sounds gorgeous, but, I think the conclusion of what works better — the cue or the song — is really an issue of what we’re use to hearing.
The song brings a wonderful, corky slant to the scene, though. It’s great.
I don’t think it’ll be any different from the late 80s when Danny had a new kid. He juggled that with both his band and film scoring.
As for the “Raindrops” scene, I like that. It didn’t replace any of Elfman’s score…
It did.
On the cue list, featured on the Spider-Man 2 DVD, there’s a cue called “Happy Montage.”
I think you can hear it on the DVD, during the director profile, when they talk about J. Jonah Jameson.
There’s also a shot of the cue list in the sound/music featurette that clearly shows Elfman wrote a cue for the pizza delivery scene (“Pizza Man” as he called it).
There’s also a cue titled “Happy Montage.”
Guess what sequence that was for?
There also was an End Titles that lasted 50 seconds long — similar to the first film.
It’s funny that you say that, Ritchie. In past years, Bernstein and Goldsmith score’s have been rejected and replaced by younger composers, i.e., in Timeline and Gangs of New York.
Not to take anything away from the great scores of their twilight years, (First Knight and Far from Heaven, especially), but their heyday was really in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
For instance with the Lord of the Rings, if the Fellowship of the Ring had not been nominated, would Two Towers have been eligible?
No.
I guess that old rule is that no movie is eligible of an Oscar if the film has thematic material from another movie.
They changed it for Return of the King.
1: It’s a sequel, and unless it’s Lord of the Rings, it’s not anywhere close to being in the running.
2: It’s a summer blockbuster, and though an incredible movie, it’s not exactly what he Academy loves. Add a few actors who do nothing but cry during the entire movie and about an hour of boringness and there might be more of a chance.
3: Half of the music he wrote was not in the movie itself.
4: Additional composers were brought onto the project.
5: It’s a Danny Elfman score…I’ll just leave it at that.
6: A score that has previously used thematic material is not eligible for an Academy Award, unless, of course, that score is for a Lord of the Rings movie.
Heavens… that music… I need to get me more of that!
What a gem that is. It really doesn’t sound like anything Danny’s done, and, paradoxically, it sounds like everything Danny’s done. Remarkable talent, that Elfman.
Elfman’s orchestrator (usually Steve Bartek), helps Danny get the desired sound, or performance, from the orchestra. That’s what an orchestrator does.
